TAIPEI (AFP) – Three Chinese ships, including the Shandong aircraft carrier, passed through the Taiwan Strait on Saturday, the island’s Ministry of National Defense said.
“A (People’s Liberation Army Navy) flotilla of 3 ships, led by the Shandong aircraft carrier, passed through the Taiwan Strait around noon today,” Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said in a statement.
According to the statement, the flotilla went “to the west of the median line, heading northward”, referring to the unofficial border in the middle of the strait which separates the island from continental Asia.
Taiwan’s armed forces said they have “monitored the situation and tasked (civil air patrol) aircraft, navy vessels, and land-based missile systems to respond to these activities.”
The defense ministry said 33 warplanes and 10 vessels were detected in the 24 hours to 6:00 am Saturday.
It came a day later after 11 vessels were spotted near the east-Asian island on Friday.
China’s latest military display also comes more than a month after Beijing launched aerial and naval exercises around the island.
Throughout recent months, China has ramped up its presence around the island and has sent warships, including an aircraft carrier, into the seas around Taiwan.
Earlier in April, Beijing staged a military show in response to a meeting in California between Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen and U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Last July, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the man who helped re-establish Washington-Beijing ties in the 1970s, had said geopolitics today requires “Nixonian flexibility” to help defuse conflicts between the U.S. and China as well as between Russia and the rest of Europe.
“Biden and previous administrations have been too much influenced by the domestic aspects of the view of China,” Kissinger, 99, said in an interview in New York with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait.
Kissinger had also warned that the increasingly adversarial relations between the U.S. and China risk a global “catastrophe comparable to World War I.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry warned on Friday the U.S. arms sale to the island of Taiwan is “an extremely wrong and dangerous move,” and China will firmly safeguard its national sovereignty and territorial security.
Earlier, Taiwan’s defense authorities confirmed that the first shipment of U.S. FIM-92 Stinger missiles had arrived in the island while Washington is also reportedly helping the island obtain access to NATO’s Link-22 secure data link system, Global Times reported.
Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning made the remarks at a press briefing on Friday. She urged the U.S. to stop arming Taiwan island and stop creating tensions across the Taiwan Straits.
U.S. arms sale to Taiwan is a grave violation of the three China-U.S. joint communiques, undermines China’s sovereignty and security interests, and undermines peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits, Mao said.
We once again warn the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities that attempts to rely on external forces to seek “independence” and refuse reunification by force will only end in failure, Mao said.